I recently circulated an article describing the closure of the last lead smelter in the United States by the federal government based on recent, impossible-to-comply-with Federal environmental regulations. I had received this article from a brother-in-law who, as a retired commercial airline pilot, was primarily concerned about the necessary use of lead in every gallon of aviation gasoline and the effect of increasing prices on airline transportation costs.

As an American hunter and target shooter, I was concerned about not only inevitable increased costs for all manner of ammunition; but also about seeing another element, vital to American society, becoming something America must rely on others providing us through war and peace and political stress. In addition to airplane fuel and hunting, lead is necessary for radiology accessories; batteries; and National Defense weapons, ammunition and support necessities. Thus our future use of lead (a very heavy and therefore expensive item to transport in any manner) will reflect the price of that transportation plus the costs imposed by importers; manufacturer acquisition; customer price competition for products; AND government effects like taxes, import restrictions and quality requirements.

The article and my short note introducing it mentioned that this was also a back-door opportunity for the current federal anti-gun/2nd Amendment Administration in Washington to diminish gun control by making ammunition costs prohibitive. To my surprise, I have received a number of angry e-mails telling me there was no evidence of this being any sort of gun control move. What was most stunning to me was that three of those readers are hunters and shooters. That they would not connect, the attitude of a White House that concocted and covered-up the Fast and Furious scandal while clandestinely negotiating and drafting a UN Small Arms Treaty that would undercut the 2nd Amendment with this opportune elimination of any domestic lead supply set me to thinking.

As our federal government breeds, introduces, spreads and protects wolves over more and more of The Lower 48 States; as they increase and protect deadly and dangerous grizzly bears over increasing rural areas; and as State governments protect and spread mountain lions and coyotes by both total protection and restricting methods of take: the availability of reasonably priced ammunition takes on a surprising urgency:

1. As protected predators increase in numbers and densities, human encounters with children, dog walkers, recreationists, hunters, joggers, fishermen, ranchers, rural residents and others increase and guns are often the only and best final protection during such encounters.

2. As protected predators ravage livestock, guns are often the only or the best property protection tool for animal owners.

4. As protected predators kill hunting dogs (among others from watchdogs and pets to show dogs and service dogs) small game hunting declines because of a reluctance to expose the dog to a horrible death by wolves, the growing reluctance of adults to hunt in wolf country, and the reluctance of parents to let rural children and young adults to hunt or otherwise recreate outdoors alone or unsupervised.

5. As #’s 3 and 4 above evolve, current Federal Excise Taxes on ammunition sales (called Pittman Robertson funding) will decrease. These taxes are intended by law only for State Wildlife Programs for Wildlife Restoration. These funds that are hundreds of million annually and which require matching state funds from hunting license sales revenue are the backbone of State wildlife programs and protect these programs from the diversions, corruption and thefts that were once common in state wildlife bureaucracies.

Wolves are THE most destructive (to human safety, game animals, livestock, and dogs) and widespread of the predators spreading across the settled landscapes of The Lower 48 States today. Unavailable or prohibitively expensive ammunition makes personal and family protection less available to rural Americans and hunters. They are simultaneously more vulnerable to attack as livestock are ravaged, dogs are killed and game animals and hunting declines (as government attributes it to “evolving ideas about animals”, “video games”, “progressive thinking”, “”ecosystem awareness”, and fantasies about “apex predators” and “trophic cascades”, etc.)

Despite all this – government gun control; government closing the last lead smelter in the US; and the continuing spread of deadly and destructive predators by government – hunters and shooters, much less rural Americans neither mention nor oppose what government is doing. For some it is because they voted for these things or current politicians in the past; for others it is because their relatives and friends will think poorly of them; for yet others it is because they don’t want to rock the government boat that they depend on more and more; for some it is because they really accept the inevitability of a world without guns in the hands of the citizenry; or they fear a world where government is not fully empowered to “restore native ecosystems” no matter the cost to humans or human society. It is actually a toxic mix of animal worship and a movement by the most powerful among us to make citizens more and more subject to government authority and power.

Wolves, closing the last lead smelter, and hunting are like the racial riots surging in Ferguson, Missouri as I write this. “You are either on this side or that side.” “You either believe this account or that account.” “Either you support (hunting, reasonably priced ammunition and guns, wolves, law-based investigation and just resolution in court) or you oppose these things.” “Don’t try to confuse me with YOUR facts.” “That’s what you think, I know better.” Finally, “Get out of the way, we are in charge and we will protect and spread wolves; we will stop all American smelting of lead; we will make ammunition prohibitively expensive and we will confiscate all guns; and we will do whatever we must to prosecute and punish that policeman no matter what facts emerge in the investigation or in the judicial system.”

The American Constitutional Republic I once knew is devolving into a Darwinian ecosystem ruled by “The Laws of Nature” and described by Thomas Hobbes long ago as a society where life is “nasty, brutish and short.” The rule of law and the supremacy of human life and human values are being replaced by The Law of Survival of the Strongest.

Late last October, I provided readers with a link to a story posted on Ammoland website. The article at Ammoland was about the Doe Run Company, a lead smelting plant in Herculaneum, Missouri that was forced, through added costs and EPA regulations to shut down. It was mentioned in this article and several others, as well as being spread like wild fire across social networks, that this forced closing was the fault of Barack Obama’s “back door” gun control policies.

The Blaze, an Internet media platform owned by Glenn Beck, a man who seems to shift positions as much as the wind and can be easily influenced by powers that could limit his popularity and ability to make money, has another article, written by Becket Adams, stating that the closing of the smelt plant will not effect ammunition production and it isn’t Obama’s fault. Really?

According to information provided by Adams in his article, it isn’t Obama’s fault that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Marxist tactics to force business (Doe Run Company) to close due to over-regulation, because Doe Run and the EPA were battling over regulations beginning in 2003.

It’s important to note that the Doe Run Company has been battling the EPA since at least 2003 and that the particular regulation cited by the company as the reason for the closure is from 2008 — before Barack Obama was even inaugurated.

It only matters to shallow or non thinkers that somehow the blame for Doe Run Company having to shut down is the blame of one person or one political party. Let’s face it. We have been over-regulated for decades now and regardless of which party was in office and controlled Congress, the Marxist/leftists and fascist/rightwing government expansion and control hasn’t really changed at all. Remember, it was under Bush, Jr’s watch that the EPA was granted extensive powers to control business if anything they were doing had any effect on “commerce.”[Edited: This is actually stated backward I believe. The power given the EPA by Bush’s Supreme Court was that the EPA had power over any business(commerce) as it pertained to environmental issues.] The short of it is that the EPA has never shrunk any during anybody’s watch in the White House.

Instead of getting caught up in a fake two-party blame game, why not recognize the simple fact that perhaps Doe Run Company was forced out of business by government regulation (by design?), period.

In addition, let’s not kid ourselves. Depending on who the puppet is in the White House and the leadership in Congress, they have influence (gang mentality) over how a government agency like the EPA goes about its business and the bravado it may or may not exert.

But, let’s move beyond the blame game for a minute and look at other information presented in this article that the author seems to be telling readers that the closing of the only mined lead smelting plant in the U.S. will not have any affect on the availability of ammunition, or at least that one might consider a “back door” gun control maneuver by the President.

Adams’ claims are based on information he used that ammunition lead does not come from mined lead ore but from recycled lead. As a result, the closing of a smelting plant that processes only raw lead ore, will have no effect on ammunition.

“[T]he majority of the lead used by ammunition manufacturers comes from secondary smelters that recycle lead from car batteries,” Bob Owens of Bearing Arms wrote.(emboldening added)

In addition:

“More than 80 percent of all lead produced in the U.S. is used in either motive batteries to start vehicles, or in stationary batteries for backup power,” the company states on its website. “In the U.S., the recycle rate of these batteries is approximately 98 percent, making lead-based batteries the most highly recycled consumer product. These batteries are recycled at secondary lead smelters.”

It’s easy, on the surface and without much thought (or perhaps with an agenda) to repeat these statements while not considering what they are really saying. For instance, it says that “the majority of the lead” used for ammunition comes from recycled lead. That tells us that not ALL of the lead used for ammunition comes from recycled lead. So, how much is a majority? How much raw lead is used for ammunition? The article really never says what those amounts are. It intimates anywhere from 80% to 98% is from recycled lead. Perhaps this statement comes the closest.

Roughly 80 percent of “lead used in the United States secondary market (which is what most ammunition manufacturers use) comes from recycled batteries and another 7 percent to 9 percent of lead on the market comes from other scrap sources,”

Perhaps 10% to 13%, or less, of lead for ammunition comes from mined ore smelted at Doe Run Company?

Consider two things. First, if the only lead smelting company in the U.S. is closing, that means importing lead that will be lost when the plant closes. It doesn’t matter whether lead from the Doe Run Company is used directly for ammunition. More than likely imported lead will force the price of lead higher. That increase will show up at all levels of lead use, including ammunition. The cost to make goods involving lead will go up, which in turn will force the price of recycled lead higher. Will this increase in the price to purchase ammunition be a deterrent to one’s ability to purchase ammunition? Of course it will, at least to some degree. Will it be enough to effect a “back door” gun control manipulation and/or a limitation on our Second Amendment rights? Maybe?

The second issue to consider is based on the statement shown above that says that the “majority” of lead used to manufacture ammunition, comes from recycled lead. And, as I stated, that means not all of it. We are left once again asking ourselves the question, “Just how much of the lead produced from mines and locally smelted is used in ammunition?”

This article doesn’t tell us any information about that, and I haven’t been able to find anything to assist in this debate. In the meantime though, consider this. We are just now coming out of a shortage of ammunition. There existed for some time, bare shelves, where those seeking to purchase ammunition could not. Depending on whose sob story you wanted to believe as to why there was no ammo, would influence how you thought about what was going on and was this also some kind of “back door” gun control.

The most common excuse for no ammunition seemed to be that people wanted to buy lots of ammunition, the motivation rooted in fear, real or imagined, of a despotic president telling the people out of one corner of his mouth that he supported the Second Amendment and out of the other corner that he wanted to take our guns away. People began to prepare. For what exactly, I’m not sure.

It appeared to me, through my own research, that for whatever the reasons ammunition was scarce, it was certainly a fickle industry, vulnerable to some fairly small outside influences, such as availability of brass and lead and political influences. Therefore, one has to ask just how much impact the loss of some lead will have on a person’s ability, into the future, to readily and within manageable costs, purchase ammunition?

Depending on one’s perspective of whether a glass is half full or half empty, the closing of the only smelting company in America, results in a “back door” gun control measure, even if its small and incremental. Do we blame Obama for this? Yes and no! Yes, in that he is just another puppet, a part of a bigger power brokerage that cannot implement fully its agenda until guns are taken away from the American people. And, no, because I don’t think that Barack Obama, as much as people want to believe he is a very intelligent person, had deliberate foresight and action, of his own accord, to shut down a lead smelting factory in order to incrementally destroy our Second Amendment rights. Or I’m all wrong.

Charlotte, NC –(Ammoland.com)- In December, the final primary lead smelter in the United States will close. The lead smelter, located in Herculaneum, Missouri, and owned and operated by the Doe Run Company, has existed in the same location since 1892.

The Herculaneum smelter is currently the only smelter in the United States which can produce lead bullion from raw lead ore that is mined nearby in Missouri’s extensive lead deposits, giving the smelter its “primary” designation. The lead bullion produced in Herculaneum is then sold to lead product producers, including ammunition manufactures for use in conventional ammunition components such as projectiles, projectile cores, and primers. Several “secondary” smelters, where lead is recycled from products such as lead acid batteries or spent ammunition components, still operate in the United States.<<<Read the Rest>>>

Late this afternoon, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a statewide ban on traditional lead ammunition for hunting—Assembly Bill 711, sponsored by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood). The deadline for gubernatorial action was Sunday, October 13th

California is the first state in the nation to take such unnecessary action.

What nonsense! According to an article found at World Net Daily, some think that the Obama administration is attempting a back door assault on Second Amendment rights by mandating that lead ammunition be banned because of the environmental damage it supposedly causes.

As with most of these issues, one is left wondering who to believe. For instance, according to the article, lead from bullets must be so abundantly shot and scattered over the landscape it’s a wonder any of us are still alive.

Even the U.S. Geological Survey has had something to say about lead-based ammunition. It estimates that nationwide there are 400,000 pieces of lead shot per acre in areas where game is hunted, which can potentially be eaten or washed into waterways.

400,000 pieces of lead shot per acre? That’s absurd……isn’t it? Maybe the U.S. Geological Survey should define “pieces” as it pertains to lead shot. And what are their “estimates” based on?

But above all, lead bullets should be banned because after all, we can’t have someone being shot in a gang shoot out in Chicago die from lead poisoning.